Adventures of the Blue-eyed Bear

Oily Progression

The Blue-eyed Bear is making her way to the gulf coast to check out the effects of the oil spill for herself. Its a bit tricky to get there since she can’t ask her friends the Orcas to take her.

The BE Bear always loved food from the sea. On the Gulf coast there are mounds as big as houses of old clam shells, oyster shells, coquina shells, that are the remains of countless meals of Native Americans. People and animals have always counted on this clammy resource from the sea for millennium. Now it will be gone. Whether these little creatures will ever come back is unknown.

One day (April 26) your a happy clam minding your own business sucking in and spewing out Mississippi delta water.  Maybe adding on a layer or two of new calcium to your shell. Then in the distance (April 28) you see a haziness in the water. (Did you know that scallops have a row of little blue eyes and they can swim away from predators by jetting water out their shells). The haze looks ominous and the wind is blowing from the southwest. What’s a clam to do, you can’t move far if at all. Soon the haze is all around you and your clam buddies (May 1st). You suck water in but orange haze (oil) clogs your gills. You suck and suck, but you can breath. (If your having trouble imagining this, stick your head in a plastic bag and you’ll get the idea. Don’t try this without someone nearby to pull the bag off if you pass out cause its a lot like  water-boarding. Clams however have no one to pull them back from the edge). Your gills just get gooier and gooier and gooier and your dead. The BE Bear will let you know what she finds!

At the writing of this post the oily ooze is coming ashore near the mouth of the Mississippi River. Of the BP spill, David Kennedy an official at NOAA said “I’m frightened. Its very very big and the efforts that are going to be required to do anything about it are just mind boggling”. They say it may be a worse spill then the Exxon Valdez. The BE Bear thinks it will be the Valdez and Katrina/Rita rolled into one and it will make the Gulf Coast a dead zone for years to come. Especially if the well can’t be shut off for months.

The response by BP and the Government was of course inadequate. And it will always be so, until  humans get it in their heads that they and all life are connected and that what happens 20 or 30 or 100 miles off-shore is as if it is in their own backyard. The Ocean can no longer be considered “other” and used as receptacle for human waste.  The Blue-eyed Bear demands that all world governments work together to clean the oceans. They can start by removing the trash rafts in the Atlantic and Pacific and then work to diminish dead zones. The Government (the people)  need to be on the spot when things go amiss and demand the strictest safety procedures and most stringent clean up measures.

But for now, at this moment, as birds and fish and shrimp and oysters and turtles and sea mammals begin to die a great cry goes up in recognition of enormous suffering! Lord their burning the Ocean! What must they do next to stave off their destruction?!

As of today the 27th of April the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico has been reported as covering 18,000 square miles and growing. Seen from space, it is expected to hit the coast of Louisiana and West Florida this Thursday of Friday. What a tragedy!! The Blue-eyed Bear is not in Gulf waters, but she can imagine what its like for all the fish, and porpoises, and whales, and sea turtles, and squid, and any creature who lives in the deep ocean to be covered with oil. Once again Americans/humans make their choices and  seem little concerned until the mess they make hits them where they live and give birth.

The BE Bear sees this tragedy as a precursor of what could happen in her birth place, that is the coastal plain of  ANWR the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, if oil drilling is allowed on that section of the north slope. Oil Companies drone on about how safe is their drilling technology. But all it takes is one drunken sailor (Exxon Valdez) or one ship to sink (Great Barrier Reef ) and an environment is ruined for decades, if it is not sullied forever. Modernity is coming at to high a price and it has nothing to do with health care. Maybe Americans need to rethink their coastal drilling policies. Nay, they won’t give up their SUVs and supersize trucks and computers. The BE Bear can only cry! What will happen to all the birds when this oil reaches the shore. What of the lives of the Spoonbill and the Ibis and the Anhinga.